slkinsey

I've had Martinis made with equal parts gin and (fresh) Noilly Prat probably at least 50 times. I don't know how much vermouth would overwhelm a Martini to the extent that differences between gin bottlings were largely obscured, but experience tells me that the drink would have to be at least 50% vermouth. There's no way something like a 3:1 Martini, which would be considered extremely wet by many people, subjugates the gin to the vermouth. There's also the question, of course, as to whether the Martini is supposed to be a cocktail in which the gin dominates, or rather one in which the gin and vermouth play with one another to create an impression that is neither gin nor vermouth, but something more. Assuming a non-crowded bar (in which event you always take your chances with a highly individualized cocktail like the Martini), these are the discussions that would give me confidence in a bartender's cocktailian chops.

If you can get something qualified as "non potable" it doesn't matter how much booze it has in it. Bitters are, by and large, "non potable." Gary talks about this upthread back in 2005. Amazing it's already been around for around 2.5 years, and also amazing the huge explosion in bitters that's happened during that short period of time.

I like Flor de Caña as well. Brugal white is not bad for this purpose either.

Yea, that's more or less my point as well, with respect to evaluating a bartender on cocktilian chops. Cointreau should be the defeult, unless there is some specific reason to use another (quality) brand. The bartender uses Hiram Walker, and I'm sticking with "something on the rocks."

We are splitting hairs. To be technical so is Grand Marnier, but I was really referring to well brand triple secs (Bols, DeKuyper, etc)Actually, Grand Marnier isn't a triple sec, it's an orange liqueur with a cognac base. Cointreau is a high-quality triple sec. I think what kills a margarita most of the time is the use of Rose's Lime and Sweet & Sour mix. If you use 100% agave tequila and fresh lime juice, Bols triple sec may be just fine. It's not quite that simple, Marco (see this thread), although I think we all agree that GM isn't a great product to use in a Margarita. IMO, Cointreau or another triple sec of similarly high quality (by which I mean better than Brizard and definitely better than Bols) is necessary for a good Margarita.

Interesting article. But, really, why must people persist in calling a drink consisting of whiskey, Cynar and pomegranate molasses, or whiskey with sweetened Shiraz a "Manhattan"? Can't we agree that a Manhattan is made with whiskey, Italian vermouth and bitters? And when you add other stuff you either have a different kind of Manhattan (e.g., "dry" or "perfect") or you have a different drink (e.g., the Little Italy at Pegu Club)?

I do totally agree with this. Knowing your regulars, working the crowd, this all goes into being a good bartender. I think the OP was fairly clear in that the "test" is to evaluate a presumptively cocktailian bartender's skill at making cocktails. Obviously, there are different bartender skills that are appropriate to different settings. For example, whereas looking great in a halter top and miniskirt while dancing on the bar are necessary skills for certain bars where the ability to make a great Martinez are not, the opposite is also usually true. The problem with a margarita, is that unless you are specific in your order, most bars are going to give you crappy tequila, triple sec (maybe) and sour mix with the requisite squeeze of lime. It is what the general public expects. If you order a margarita up, you might get lucky and get lime juice but you will still need to specify the liquor. These are all reasons why the Margarita is a good test of a presumptively cocktailian bartender's bona fides. A good cocktailian bartender in a cocktail bar is not going to give any customer "crappy tequila, triple sec (maybe) and sour mix with the requisite squeeze of lime" without at least having a discussion with the customer. Because they don't know, can't tell, don't care, hardly ever use any, or some combination of the three. Considering that the standard Martini you'll get most often these days contains barely a molecule of white vermouth (and many bartenders make, and customers expect, Manhattans on the same principle) it hardly makes any difference if the vermouth bottle was first opened 9 months ago.

I don't know, Andy. Plenty of bars have a few token bottles of vermouth gathering dust on the back bar. And if the bottle's been sitting out there post-opening (or, worse yet, with a speed pourer in the neck) for six months, there's pretty much no way you're getting a good Manhattan.

Other decent tests of baseline mixology would be Cointreau-based sours. The Margarita is a good test, because everyone knows it. Do you get a glass of frozen slush or a proper up drink? Is it overly sweet? Does the bartender reach for Cointreau or crappy triple sec? What kind of tequila is used? Is it made with (in decreasing order of preference) fresh lime juice, bottled lime juice, sour mix or Rose's? An interesting test would also be the Sidecar. A lot of the questions as to brand of base spirit, Cointreau-versus-crap, fresh citrus, balance, etc. are the same as they are with the Margarita. The first question is whether the bartender even knows how to make one.

Am I being unrealistic to expect a cocktail bar to mix a decent cocktail? I don't expect a dive or neighborhood bar to do this, sure. But I would expect a swanky lounge with high prices to mix a basic drink. (And no, I don't normally hang in swanky lounges, but this is for work.) There are lots of places that sell cocktails, but aren't really "cocktail bars." Practically every restaurant in NYC sells cocktails, but few of them are real cocktail spots. A lot of swanky places charging high prices are doing tons of business on superpremium vodka sodas, booze on the rocks and fruit bomb-style mixed drinks.

You need to circumscribe your expectations by first evaluating whether you are in a cocktail bar and whether it is a cocktailian bartender. There are plenty of bars that have lots of bottles on the back bar and the occasional V-glass, but aren't interested in being the place you go for that really great Manhattan. A Manhattan is a relatively foolproof drink to order if you're at a place that meets minimum requirements (e.g., no dust on the vermouth bottle), but I find that I still need to look at the back bar to choose my whiskey and then say something like "three to one [call brand] Manhattan, stirred, up with a twist and a short dash of bitters if you have any" at most bars around the country. Unfortunately, you're in a bit of a bind down in New Orleans, which is somewhat notorious among the cocktailian set for mediocre mixology (for example, I recently told a bartender friend here I was going to NO for my upcoming honeymoon and he said, "you know you have to 'bring your own' when you go down there, right?") The impression I get is that there are two or three pretty good places, but the drop off is quite steep. Hopefully I'll discover otherwise in November.

Steven, are you talking about everyday utility-level dishes, or something nicer? For the everyday stuff, I have always had good luck going to a place like Fishs Eddy and buying lowbrow-restaurant-grade white dishes. They're not as pretty as something from Williams Sonoma, but they're indestructible and oven safe.

I'll certainly agree that, to me, pizza has always been about the crust. But, leaving out the old school coal-fired places, I'm not sure NYC deck-oven by-the-slice pizza has been defined by a superior crust in a long, long time. There's only so good the crust can be with this style of pizza. Sure, there are some places like Di Fara and Sal & Carmine's that manage to turn out a better crust than usual (ableit radically different in the case of these two examples), but I wouldn't say even the best places have been head-and-shoulders above the norm. The places that have always used canned "pizza sauce" have probably always had mediocre-to-crappy sauce on their pizza. I would question whether there was a great deal of pre-made "pizza sauce" being sold in the 1970s, and almost certainly there wasn't in the 1950s. I would also question whether, in fact, there even exists a high quality "pizza sauce" sold to the restaurant trade in gigantic metal cans. Most likely such a sauce would cost more than it would cost a pizzeria to make its own sauce. Clearly most of them aren't doing that, and the huge leap in sauce quality at places like Di Fara that do make their own sauce is usually obvious. Of course canned sauce doesn't have to be poor quality, but unfortunately it almost always is poor quality. Personally, once I started making my own tomato sauce around 20 years ago, I've never been able to stomach any brand of commercial pasta sauce regardless of brand or cost. I have to assume there are even greater limitations on the quality of pizza sauce that comes in #10 cans.

Patsy's East Harlem -- certainly the best old-NYC-school coal-fired pizza in Manhattan and arguably the best in the City -- is made by Latino pizzaioli.

The reality is that there are probably at least three distinct styles of "NY Pizza."

I just don't care for that much cheese, so I doubt I would have liked it. But, of course I believe that the quality was much higher twenty years ago when they used much better cheese. That's the main thrust of my post. However, the point that I'm making in the part of my post you're quoting is that today they can't use the same amount of cheese and make the economics work unless they use crappy quality Wisconsin pizza cheese. So, if they want to use better quality cheese and produce a better quality slice, they have two choices: 1. use the same gigantic amount of cheese at higher quality and raise their prices accordingly, which I don't think would work economically with their clientele; or 2. use a smaller amount of high quality cheese. Looking at the picture of the slice Steven posted above, I think you could easily cut the volume of cheese by half and still have a generous amount of cheese.

I'd say that Steven has hit the nail squarely on the head in blaming the general decline on crappy, rubbery Wisconsin pizza cheese. Twenty years ago, I don't think the economic factors were there (massive industry consolidation combined with, until the relatively recent spike in fuel prices, ridiculously inexpensive transportation) in favor of Wisconsin pizza cheese. Most likely, most of the NYC pizza places in the 50s-60s were getting their cheese locally, in the 70s-80s they were getting their cheese regionally, and starting in the 90s going forward they were getting their cheese nationally. This general movement away from local and artisinal/small batch to national and industrial had to have been accompanied by a corresponding decline in quality, which would be especially noticable with respect to pizza made in the "pile on the cheese" style. Consider also that there was surely a similar shift in other ingredients. In the 50s-60s, I'm sure most pizza places were making their own pizza sauce. Nowadays, it's rare to see a "slice shop" level pizza place in the City that even has a stove in evidence. They're all getting cans of pre-made "pizza sauce" and perhaps (but not always) tweaking it with things like dried herbs and garlic powder. Continuing in that direction, I can't imagine that all pizza places in the 50s-60s were using Hormel pepperoni, which is what 95% of them use today. Nowadays, if a place like Ray's, Original Ray's, Famous Ray's, Famous Original Ray's, Original Famous Ray's or Seriously We're Not Kidding This Is The Authentic Original Famous Ray's wanted to duplicate the quality of 1980, they would have to charge a lot more for a slice. And there's some question in my mind as to whether the jump in quality would be enough that they could continue to compete. Rather, the game seems to be: either you make do with crap Wisconsin pizza cheese and (hopefully) make up the difference as best you can by tweaking your sauce and, as Steven points out, offering an expansive array of interesting toppings, in which case you charge the going price for a slice, or you radically upgrade your ingredients, position yourself as a more "gourmet" pizzeria and charge 50% more. Honestly, in my opinion, the best thing a place like Ray's could to to improve pizza quality would be to spend twice as much on the cheese and use half as much of it.

Just a thought, but I'm assuming that they would've stored some ingredients in 'dasher' bottles (like bitter bottles). Do we have any idea what sort of bottles these would have been? Actually, I don't believe this was the case. I believe that, if one is looking at an old recipe, a dash from a bitters bottle would have been significantly smaller than a dash from a maraschino bottle or curaçao bottle, which I assume came directly from the bottle. My going-in assumption is that two dashes of liquor or juice comes in at somewhere between a teaspoon on the light side and a quarter-ounce on the heavy side -- which is significantly more volume than you'd get from two dashes out of a bitters bottle. This becomes fairly apparent when you try out some of the older recipes. Plenty of old recipes call for, say, 2 ounces of gin, 1/2 ounce of maraschino and two dashes of lemon juice. Well, if those lemon juice dashes are bitters bottle dashes, you might as well not include them at all because they won't make any difference. On the other hand, a quarter-ounce of lemon juice would make a difference in that drink.

Ah. So you're talking about "a saute of something," as opposed to the act of sauteing something. I agree that there is usually a moist component in "a something saute" or "saute of something, but I'd argue that the act of sauteing is moving around largely chunk-shaped pieces of food in a limited amount of fat over high heat so as to brown them evenly on all sides (the act of frying being much the same except that the food isn't moved around very much). However, once one has completed the sauteing of the food items one often uses liquid and a lid, and calls the result "something saute." Many times, people are actually frying and call it "saute" for a variety of reasons. To be more clear, I wasn't reacting to your description of using a lid in your "chicken saute." Rather, I thought I was reacting to your description of using a lid while sauteing. In my understanding, one wouldn't be able to saute (the browning stage of your chicken saute dish) unless the lid was off. The cooking subsequent to the sauteing (or frying) would be braising, if it involved liquid and a lid. Of course, who knows... Ruhlman may entirely contradict that understanding.

Russ, isn't the whole point of the saute technique that you're keeping the ingredients relatively dry? How can that be reconciled with use of a lid?

If there is one thing that I think drags down the overall quality of NYC barbecue (which, it must be said, has made huge strides in the past few years) it's that so many of the places seem to be trying to be all things to all people, and produce radically different styles of barbecue. It's not the case, as some people think, that Texas open pit barbecue joints cook only beef, and so on. But it is the case that they don't make Eastern Carolina style whole hog. Similarly, barbecue joints in Eastern Carolina may be cooking brisket, but they aren't making mesquite smoked Texas-style brisket. What we see in the City is that even the best multi-style barbecue places really only excel in one style, and their other offerings tend to be substantially less successful. Similarly, the best places that have opened in the past few years seem to be geared towards making one style of barbecue, or rather have one approach to making barbecue. Hill Country is an excellent example of this approach... note that they do not offer pulled pork.

I wouldn't think that the taste would be different if you cook pasta covered or uncovered. I prefer to cook pasta in the largest volume of water practical (many people cook pasta in far to little water -- I consider 10 quarts to be about minimum for a pound of pasta). As a result, my pasta pot (this one, with a strainer insert) is usually filled close to the top. If I were to leave it covered throughout the pasta cooking process with the burner on full, it would foam over soon after coming back to the boil due to the starch released into the water.

Why in God's name would you want to do that, Sam? Be a sport and have some folks over! Good point. When are you free?

Yea, I'm with markk on this one. A lot of these things we cook uncovered we would either like to reduce (e.g., tomato sauce), might suffer from being covered (e.g., stocks), need more attention than a cover can provide (e.g., custard), would like to be at a rolling boil and therefore don't benefit much from a cover (e.g., potatoes), might overboil and foam over (e.g., pasta) and so on. The things we cook covered are only covered because we would like to have a steamy environment and would like to actively discourage evaporation (e.g., rice and braising). Anything that is primarily liquid and will be actively bubbling is not something I would tend to cover as I was cooking it. I often use some combination of covering and not-covering, primarily for heat-retention purposes. For example, when I cook pasta I always put the lid back on the pasta pot until the water comes back to a full boil.

So, lately some Batavia arrak has been showing up again in NYC stores. It's been Batavia-Arrack van Oosten. A few bottles have come my way lately, and I'm looking for some ideas. Anyone who has read Jerry Thomas's book will know that Batavia arrack is featured prominently in the punch recipes. For example, we have the Arrack Punch. JT's recipe for three tumblers of puch goes something like this: So, it's 6:3:2:1 water to Jamaica rum to Batavia arrack to lemon juice, sweetened to taste. Leaving out the water, you could do something like this for a single serving: Anyway, what I'm looking for are good recipes for Batavia arrack, and secondarily advice as to how to adapt large volume punch recipes such as those in JT to single servings.